'Treefingers' was apparently added to the tracklist of Kid A relatively late in the process of finding the right order of songs for the album. It was created by Thom using chords Ed had played on his guitar and processing and rearranging them digitally.

The track was shortened for Kid A, the unedited version appeared on the soundtrack of the movie Memento:

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Steve Lamacq: "We're going to play some of the choices which you've brought in as well tonight, and we're going to start with Avrocar, which is the choice of Ed."
Ed: "I actually heard this on the Breezeblock about two years ago, I think, and it's just a stunning piece of music, I mean, I always kind of hoped that we'd be able to do something like this within the scope of Radiohead, but feared for a long time that, you know, to go out like that would be too much, but I think we've actually done it on the record. I mean, it's quite interesting listening to 'Treefingers', because there's definitely... I mean 'These Themes 3', which is the track, is very ambient, and 'Treefingers' has its ambient moment."

Mark Russell: "When I read about the album before I heard it, I imagined there'd be no guitar, but I was surprised by how much there was."

Jonny Greenwood: "Yeah. And there's songs like 'Treefingers', which is just one guitar, but people just assume that it isn't."

Mark: "And so presumably you're using the guitar through lots of effects processors, or to trigger samples, so that actually, what is triggered by a guitar doesn't necessarily sound like a guitar."

Jonny: "Yeah. That's pretty much how it happened. Ed just played lots and lots of guitar loops, and was just creating wonderful texture, and Thom turned it into a structure, rather than something aimless, that was all."

Mark: "It's quite Eno-ish, isn't it, in a way?"

Jonny: "Yeah, it is. It's quite speaker-breaking as well. It has frequencies in it which can disturb the neighbours, while still being very kind of slow and ambient, having no rhythm in it."

Ed: "We laugh at this. People say, 'Is your next record going to be more song-based?' and we're like, 'What were those ten tracks on the last record?' OK, 'Treefingers' might not be a classic verse-chorus-verse-chorus, but it's still a song."

Q: "How were some of the computer-conceived tracks on Kid A put together?"

Ed: "Some of the sounds on Kid A are like, 'Wow, I've never heard anything like that in my life'. And they all started off in Thom's computer - on Cubase, with plug-ins and stuff added on top. 'Treefingers' is an ethereal, spacey song built from guitar loops. I'm not taking any credit for it, because Thom arranged it. He recorded me playing the guitar for ten minutes, then loaded parts into his sampler, played bits on his keyboard, and made sense of it. It doesn't sound like a guitar, which is great."

'Treefingers' had its surprising live debut at the beginning of the second half of touring for The King of Limbs, but would quickly disappear again from setlists after only two performances. This is the live debut on July 10th 2012 in Nimes, France: